Our plans for our second day in Seoul were kind of washed out. Thanks to a downpour that lasted all day, we were forced to make some alterations. We stuck with the first part of our agenda though: as it was Sunday, we wanted to attend Yeoido Full Gospel Church, its claim to fame being the largest Pentecostal church in the world.
I knew there would definitely be English translation in the service to look forward to and I was just generally curious to see how a Korean (mega) church would feel.
Turned out that it was right next to the park we visited the day before so we already knew exactly where to go. We arrived early and waited outside for the previous service to finish. When the doors finally opened, we stood far back and watched the massive exodus of umbrellas.
Once inside, we were guided to the second floor and were the first to be seated in the foreigner section. Someone kindly greeted us, asked us where we were from and gave us our own audio set and told us the channel to use. There were several different languages available. By the end of the service, our section was packed. You could definitely tell who weren't the regular attendees, what with the pictures and videos we saw other people taking.
So, since they broke the ice first, we snuck in a couple, too. ^.^
It had a very traditional church style (hello wooden pews) and it was huge, but I couldn't get over how many people were sitting around me. The picture above shows an incredibly small portion of the sanctuary and congregation. It was incredible to hear the voices of that many people. Thankfully they sang a lot of familiar hymns, so even though it wasn't in my language I still knew the words. Surreal.
As for the sermon, hearing of God's immense love for us wasn't something new to me, but hearing how this knowledge impacts the particular pressures that Koreans face in their society is what made it different.
In case there was ever a second where I forgot I was in a foreign church, their pre-edited video announcements reminded me once again. All the cute, kitschy-awesome sparkles and pink glowing effects they added to the scenes--so typically Korean.
After the service we took another stroll through Yeouido Park. Quite pretty in the rain. We found a little gazebo and hung out there for a little bit.
We ate at School Food in the IFC mall close by, some cold noodles and yummy mari. The menu was mostly in Korean so we just took a guess and we enjoyed our choices. We did some shopping and browsing around, the perfect indoor activity.
After leaving the mall we hit a bit of bad luck when our senses of direction and timing were off. We decided to find a movie theatre, and when we finally arrived, it too was closed. This was our biggest subway misadventure yet but we felt validated after meeting some equally confused foreigners on one of the strangest subway stops.
I didn't mind too much though because the company was good and we were still figuring out the city as we went. It was still exciting.
In hindsight we could have gone back and watched a movie in the theatre at IFC mall. Instead, we ended up buying ramen (which is a bit different here!), going back to our little abode and spent the night watching a couple episodes of a K-Drama, which has become one of my newest obsessions lately. I like to call it "culture research." Apparently it's helping my pronunciation! Win-win.
To sum up our Sunday, we went to church, shopped, got royally lost then found again on the subway and had a nice night in. We laughed at ourselves a lot. Ivonne said that if we could spend another week in the city to figure out the subway, we'd be total pros! I absolutely agree.
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